


House on the Hill

by FleetSparrow



Series: Story a Day in May 2018 [22]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 07:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14732846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/pseuds/FleetSparrow
Summary: Dick wakes up in a strange house, finding himself completely alone.  Or is he?





	House on the Hill

**Author's Note:**

> Day 22 of Story a Day in May. Prompt: Your character wakes up in an unfamiliar space.
> 
> This is actually the second of the two things I wrote for this prompt, but I like this one better.

Dick awoke in a strange, dark place. The last thing he remembered was heading for a door in a house that looked frighteningly like Wayne Manor if it had been seen through a mirror. Now, all around him was darkness.

He tried to sit up, but something shifted under him, releasing a small avalanche of rocks. Coal. He was down in a coal cellar. OK, that made sense to him. Slowly, he scooched away from the coal pile, hitting solid ground with an "oof". He reached down to his boot, checking for his flashlight. It was gone. So were his eskrima sticks, his wingdings, and his lock picks. Someone had stripped him of all his tools.

"Great," he said aloud, his voice swallowed up in the darkness. They hadn't taken his mask, though, so he switched it to night vision. Everything was still dark, but at least now he could make out the general shapes of things around him. The coal pile was to his right. There was something unidentifiable, but big, to his immediate left. He reached out for it. An old piano. His fingers danced over the keys, but it made no sound.

He ventured forward. Something large showed up in front of him, and he reached out to touch it. A stairway. He'd found the way out. Carefully walking around to the front of it, he slowly climbed the stairs, testing each one for his weight until he put pressure on it. The stairs held. Finally, he was beginning to see some light at the edges of the door above. Switching off his night vision, he groped for the door. There was the handle. It turned in his hand. He stepped down, pulling the door open.

"Let there be light."

There wasn't much light at all, but it looked wonderfully bright compared to the total darkness of the cellar. He stepped out through another door and into a hallway. The house felt eerily similar. So he was in the same place he had been. Why didn't he remember how he got there? Somebody must have snuck up on him and clobbered him, but he couldn't remember anyone doing so. And his head didn't hurt. He flipped an imaginary coin and started down the right side of the hall.

If this had been the Wayne Manor, he could've expected a drawing room, the breakfast room, and the formal dining room. Here, however, was a parlor, a study, and a library, in the order he would have expected to find them down the other wing. He peered into the library. A dusty volume was set open on a stand. He walked to it, taking a quick note of his surroundings. Everything was covered with dust, as if the mansion had been built and then abandoned to the ages.

The book was open to a page on the old families of Gotham. It listed the Waynes, the Kanes, and the Elliots. Dick looked around again. He'd never been in the Elliot place before, but if the ancestors here were anything like Tommy Elliot, then it might explain the mirror-image manor. He flipped to another page, this one with the family tree of the Waynes. Each member of the family was crossed out, including the handwritten note of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Beneath it, Bruce's name appeared alone and circled. The last of the Wayne clan.

Dick flipped to the Elliots' page. Here, the same hand had crossed out each one of the names except for the last two, mother and son. Dick released a long breath. This was the Elliot household. And somewhere in here, Tommy Elliot had his things.


End file.
